


and made of silk and steel

by aw marvel no (getoffmysheets), sure sure (getoffmysheets)



Series: born of hell('s kitchen) [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Coparenting, Foggy Knows Best, Gen, Karen will Cut a Bitch, Malcolm is A Mess, Matt and Jess fight crime, Parent-Child Relationship, Peter Parker Has a Family, Superpowers, The Defenders really love this family, and also do crimes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-25 02:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20716850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/aw%20marvel%20no, https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/sure%20sure
Summary: "Yeah? What do I smell like, Murdock?" she said sharply, her tone its most challenging. "Come on, you know what it is. Just say it."It came out all in one breath. He'd been trying to ignore it, trying to breathe past it the whole time, telling himself that couldn't possibly be what that sickly sweet smell was. "Dead bodies."AKA Devil-Dad and Super-Mom: the Sequel!





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnd we're back! 
> 
> A terrible cold and then a tooth extraction made this take a whole fucking lot longer than I wanted it to, but we made it here eventually! I really need this chapter to like...go away now, so it's a little shorter than usual.

Jessica sighed. “Peter…”

Peter gave her his most pathetic stare and she huffed and looked up into the cloudy gray skies. Taking a deep breath, she said “Buddy…she has a collar on. We can’t keep her. Someone is probably missing her right now.”

His lower lip trembled, but Peter nodded bravely.  _ Oh my god, this sucks. Don’t do this to me, kid _ . “Okay,” he muttered, rubbing at his face. “We’re gonna make sure she gets home though, right?”

“Right,” she agreed firmly, glancing at the pitbull, who was leaning against Peter’s side with an expression of complete and perfect adoration, despite the unfocused stare of her eyes.  _ Geez, neither of you are making this easy on me, are you? While we’re there, we’re gonna have a conversation with her owner about how dangerous it is for a disabled animal in this city. _

She felt pretty confident that unlike Matt, the dog didn’t have super-senses. It was astonishing that she hasn’t been hit by a car. Then again, Jessica was guessing she hadn’t been loose that long. She looked relatively neat – a bit skinny, but not shockingly so.

“Hey girl,” she cooed, cautious despite Peter’s assertion that she didn’t bite. Gently and slowly reaching out, Jessica turned over the little bone-shaped green tag on her collar, blinking in surprise when she realized that the address given for the owner was only the next block over. She smirked. “Your friend’s name is Tinkerbell.”

Peter wrinkled his nose and Jessica laughed, the dog’s ears lifting at the sound. She was pretty cute – Jessica might actually consider getting him a pet. Maybe a cat, though. Pitbulls were big dogs and she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to let a seven year old handle one. “Peter and Tinkerbell!”

Tinkerbell didn’t seem to object to Jessica picking her up and carrying her – they didn’t have a leash to lead her on and she had no idea how well a blind dog could navigate a busy city street. Hell, she had no real idea of how well a blind  _ human _ could navigate a city street – she had the feeling Matt was not a good metric to judge by.

The building was one of the nicer places in Hell’s Kitchen and a bored looking white teenage boy with blond dreads answered the door. “Yeah?”

“Hey, yeah, my son found your dog over in the schoolyard on the next street,” Jessica said, with as much politeness as she could muster. “Might wanna keep her leashed up – the city is dangerous for any dog, but a blind dog who doesn’t know where she is will be in even more danger. Luckily, she was too scared to get far.”

The teenager made no move to take Tinkerbell or let her inside. “Oh, yeah, that’s Tink. She didn’t run away.”

“Oh…kay?” said Jessica, becoming more and more puzzled.

“You can keep her,” the teenager said with a shrug and a little sneer. “My stupid sister bought her from this dude in Jersey. Little twit couldn’t tell she was blind until she brought her home. Kara should’ve remembered to take the damn tag off her before she let her go.”

And then the door slammed shut again.

Peter stared at the closed door in stunned silence. “I-I don’t understand…” he said in a tiny voice. “Jess…?”

Jessica heard a horrible loud roaring in her ears. They threw her away. They threw a helpless animal away because of something she couldn’t possibly be able to fix or control. A sudden vision appeared before her eyes of a little boy with dark hair and a small, white face, waiting for a mother that would never claim him. She could see this child with sharp, painful clarity – the benefit (or hazard) of examining dozens of his photographs. And the boy standing next to her only made it seem more real.

It gave her a terrible sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the thought of that child standing abandoned in his Catholic orphanage was what made Jessica march back down the street. “Come on,” she told her son, still watching her anxiously. “We have to go to the pet store – your dog is going to need a leash, a bowl, and a new tag.”

“And a new name,” Peter chirped, hopping a little to catch up with her. One hand latched onto the pocket of her jacket. “Right, Jess?”

“What, you don’t like ‘Tinkerbell’?” she teased.

Peter pouted, then said, rather diplomatically in her opinion, “It’s kind of a silly name, don’t you think?”

“It is,” she agreed. “So what are you going to call her instead?”

There was a thoughtful pause, then Peter said “Tessa!”

“Tessa?” Jessica repeated, bemused. “Alright.”

Having acquired a new name tag (complete with her new name), a bowl, a few toys, and a new leash, Jessica has the slightly terrifying experience of walking a blind dog through a crowded street.

Tessa was an anxious dog on the ground and tended to hold herself back against Jessica's legs. Jessica doubted the dog had ears as good as Matt’s, but surely they still worked, right? “Right,” she said, snapping her fingers on the dog’s right side, gently pulling the leash as the three of them turned at the corner. As they came to a curb, she snapped her fingers again, raising the pitch of her voice. “Up.”

It took patience and repetition, but Tessa seemed to be learning what her Mistress was attempting to communicate. By the time they got back to the apartment, Jessica even felt safe enough to hand Peter the leash and let him lead her around the interior. “Don’t let her off the leash yet, buddy – she could hurt herself by accident.”

She waited until Peter was safely tucked in bed for the night before calling Matt. “Murdock, do you have any idea what your son did today?”

“Wow, I just had a serious flashback to 1996,” Matt said, amused. “Only the son in question was me. What’s the matter?”

“I picked up Peter from school. Would you like to know what I found him doing?” she said, faux-sweetly.

Pained, Matt said “Please don’t tell me it was smoking, because then my old man will really be having a laugh.”

“I found him feeding a dog, Matthew. And he really, really wanted to take the dog home. Would you like to know why? ‘Cause she’s  _ blind _ , Matt. The dog is blind.”

“Oh god, he didn’t,” Matt breathed, stomach dropping. “Did he get hurt?”

Foggy stared at Matt in concern from across the room.

“No, actually,” Jessica’s voice softened. “She’s pretty sweet. He named her Tessa.”

“I’m sorry, I could swear you just said ‘named’,” Matt said, and whatever his face was doing made Foggy and Karen start cackling. “You’re letting him keep a blind dog?”

“Well, I tried giving the blind dog back to her owner, but the owner’s brother was nice enough to inform me that the ‘blind’ part was the reason they decided to dump a helpless animal on the street,” she said tightly.

“Son of a  _ bitch _ ,” Matt growled, taking a deep breath to calm himself down.

“Yeah, that was my reaction,” she said quietly, without going into her sudden flash of maternal grief for the young boy Matt Murdock used to be. “Only I had a seven year old standing next to me who couldn’t understand why someone would do that.”

Sighing heavily, Matt rubbed a hand over his five o’clock shadow. “Blind animals aren’t like blind  _ people, _ Jess,” he said finally. “They don’t really understand what’s happened to them and it can make them…aggressive. Especially predator-type animals like dogs and cats. She could bite him by accident, just because her instincts tell her to and she can’t visually identify him.”

“That’s the thing – I think she might have been born this way,” she said, lighting her feet onto the sofa. “She’s a little anxious walking around in a crowd, but she calms down a lot indoors, and if she was gonna bite him, wouldn’t she have done it in the very beginning?”

“I suppose,” he said slowly, still not happy that Peter might have gotten himself hurt.

Jessica glanced at Tessa, obediently laying in her doggy-bed, though she was clearly listening to her voice, tail thumping slowly. She tapped the sofa next to her, lifting her voice to a higher, sweeter tone. “Tessa – up! Up!”

Though her ears lifted at the sound of her name – in just a few hours, she’d definitely grasped that ‘Tessa’ was ‘hey, you!’ – Tessa still looked confused. It took Jess two more attempts to get her to obey. “Good. Good girl, Tessa.” To Matt, she said “Pete’s been really keen on teaching her ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘left’, and ‘right’. She’s already figured out her name.”

Grimly, Matt replied “I would make sure that ‘stop’, ‘sit’, and ‘lay’ is on that list, especially if you really plan to let him keep her.”

Jessica shrugged. “Might as well. I’ll get a dog bed for the office and she can stay at work with me when he isn’t home.”

He scoffed. “You don’t even like dogs.”

Jessica scratched Tessa behind the ears, who let out a contented sigh and rested her large head on Jess’s knee. “I dunno – this one’s growing on me.”

**Group Chat – Peter Parker Protection Squad**

Mods: Foggy-Bear, Kare-Bear

Members

Colleen is Fantastic

Dragon Fister

I’m Not Daredevil

Jess for Success

Mister Cage

Save Me, Claire!

Kare-Bear:

you got him a dog?!?!?!

You Bitch

Jess for Success:

it’s a girl-dog, yeah

Foggy-Bear:

Karen had very strong Aunt Plans for Pete this Xmas

and I think you just stomped on them

Jess for Success:

to be fair

he got HIMSELF a dog

I was just the sucker who said yes

probably because Matt can’t see the face he makes when he wants something

Foggy-Bear:

it definitely still works on him

he says Peter’s voice hits the ‘dad’ receptors just right

it’s impossible to say no to him

Dragon Fister:

Can we have a pic?????

Colleen is Fantastic:

PHOTO. PHOTO. PHOTO.

Save Me, Claire!:

c’mon Jones

give the masses what they want!

** _Photo attachment sent by Jess for Success_ **

** _Photo attachment sent by Jess for Success_ **

(The first picture is Peter, mouth tightly closed, letting Tessa lick gravy off his face and the second shows him laying down on the carpet in Jessica’s living room, half asleep with his new best friend on his chest.)

Kare-Bear:

D E A D

I have died

I am in heaven

Mister Cage:

Jesus, they’re cute!

Save Me, Claire!:

ohmygod

I want ten

Mister Cage:

……

please tell me you mean dogs

Claire

Claire

10 dogs, right?

Dragon-Fister:

I wouldn’t mind ten kids!

Kids are fun!!

Colleen is Fantastic:

Absolutely not.

Kare-Bear:

Matt can have ten children

But only if they’re Jessica’s

Jess for Success:

Excuse Me?

I didn’t agree to this

Foggy-Bear:

Matt says he didn’t either

Kare-Bear:

Yeah, but…c’mon

You can’t argue with the results, guys!

Save Me, Claire:

You know I have to admit

She’s got you there, kids

Dragon Fister:

GASP

NINE MORE PETERS?!!!

Foggy-Bear:

Matt just spit beer down his shirt

He said, and I quote:

“Can we raise the first child before we move onto two through ten?”

Shit I think he’s choking now

Or laughing, I can’t tell

\---

The dog really did grow on her – Peter was diligent and careful with her training, mindful of his mother’s warning that leaving Tessa unguided could result in her getting hurt or hurting herself by accident. He spent the whole weekend repeating circuits of the apartment with her, making sure she knew where to expect things.

They worked on ‘right’, ‘left’, ‘up’, and ‘down’, as well as the ‘stop’, ‘sit’, and ‘lay down’ Matt insisted on. Tessa mostly had the ‘sit’ and ‘lay down’ parts trained into her already – there was some initial uncertainty about where ‘lay down’ meant, but that was learned with patience and time.

Taking her for a walk was still a minor test of nerves and observational skills, but like most things, repetition brought ease.

She brought Tessa when she brought Peter back to school Monday morning and he found it a little difficult to say goodbye. “Bye, girl,” he whispered sadly, after Ned had already been introduced and Jess reminded them that the first period would start soon. “Be good for Jess!”

“Aw buddy,” Jess sighed. Looking at that sad little face was the one thing that didn’t get easier with repetition. “She’ll be with me any time you wanna see her. We’re only a few blocks away.”

Peter nodded, still looking glum, but raised his arms for a hug. Jessica maybe squeezed him a little harder than usual, because he let out a surprised huff and gave her an odd look when she released him. “Bye, Jess! Love you.”

“Love you, kid.”

She took a meandering route back home, stopping at a café for a coffee and a scone. Jessica sort of accidentally-on-purpose dropped some of the scone right in front of Tessa for her to eat off the ground as she wandered back into the office.

There was a dude standing there in front of Alias’ door when they arrived on the right floor, and he whirled around at the sound of the elevator door opening. “Jesus, finally,” he sighed, sagging into the wall. “The sign said you were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago!”

Jessica shrugged, unapologetic. “Took the scenic route. Can I help you?”

“Yes, and you need to hurry!” the man said fervently. “He took Trish!”

She stopped in her tracks, giving Tessa a small fright as she paused without giving her any signals. “Look,” she growled furiously. “I don’t know who the hell you are or why you give a shit, but have no idea what Trish got herself into and I can’t think of anything I want less than get involved with whatever she’s doing.”

“I’m-I’m a friend of your sister’s. Erik. Erik Gelden.” Erik gave her a strange look. “She never actually got ahold of you, did she?” he murmured. “You already have something to do with this, Jones. I thought she warned you last time…”

“The point,” Jessica barked, crossing her arms. “ Quickly .”

Presumably, if this dude was a friend of Trish’s, he was fully aware of how dangerous it was to let her patience wear out.

“Salinger hunts people like us,” he said simply, making an expansive gesture between them. “Tracks them, captures them, and murders them.”

“Like us?” Jessica repeated dryly. “Alcoholics? Brunettes? What?”

And then he said the one thing that could’ve gotten her attention. “People with powers,” he said with a small, helpless shrug. “You, me, Trish.”

But Jessica’s brain was going:  _ Matt, Luke, Danny _ .

“Still has nothing to do with me,” she said with a tight smile. “I didn’t piss this wackjob off.”

Quietly desperate, he said “He’s a serial killer, and  _ you’re _ what he likes to kill, Jones. You’re one of the most famous and easily accessible gifted people in the whole city.”

Suddenly, Malcolm’s warning that Trish’s bad guy went after the family and friends made much more sense. He  _ had _ to.

He was hunting the ultimate prey, the predator that lived at the very top of the food chain – humans with human intelligence and human cunning, but with superhuman powers. Of course he had to target their friends and family – unless their abilities were extremely useless or extremely situational, there was no other way he could possibly beat them.

There was tension headache building between her eyes and her mind was still repeating  _ Matt, Luke, Danny _ like a broken fucking record, because Jessica Jones might be the most easily accessible person with powers in this part of town, but the most well-known was Daredevil. But Daredevil had gone dark, because his son needed him more. And that, Jessica realized, was what was probably saving Matt’s life right now.

She couldn’t shield Peter from this man, because she was already his target, just by sheer virtue of being herself. Her best solution was to put a stop to him, and quickly. Saving Trish would be a nice bonus to that, but what she really needed to do was keep Salinger’s attention focused on the superhumans he already knew about so that he wouldn’t start hunting down more.

Jessica sighed loudly and Erik stared at her in surprised terror as she led Tessa into the office with her cutesy baby-voiced commands before sitting down at her desk. “Trish is like, super fucked or whatever, but I have to make a phone call before we get started on this bullshit.”

Erik snorted, staring at her in disbelief and shaking his head as he watched Jessica holding her phone to her ear. “Yeah? You got something more important to do than saving your sister’s life?”

“Yeah,” she drawled lazily. “Saving my son’s.”

Watching people freak out about that would probably never get old, Jessica decided. “Your-?!”

“Yeah, hi. No, the drop off was fine – I mean, he obviously didn’t want to leave her, but…y’know. Uh, hey, listen...this ain’t actually a social call.” She glanced up at Gelden and chewed her lower lip, quickly staring back down at the scratched up surface of her desk. Her stomach hurt. Her head hurt. She quickly turned away from Gelden and found herself staring out the window. “Murdock, I…I might not be able to take Peter back…for a while.”

Erik didn’t hear the reply on the other end, but Jessica heard it just fine. “You…okay.” She hated how soft and understanding he was. It made her head hurt more. “Do you, um, is this a sobriety issue? Did you have a slip up? Can I help…?”

“No.” She hated Trish. She hated Erik. She hated her mother. She hated herself. She  _ really _ hated Salinger. She hated every single reason she had to make this call in the first place. “No, Murdock. I need him to stay with you. I need-I need you to keep a really close eye on him –  _ NO _ goddamn blind jokes outta you. Just-just…” she swallowed through the angry tears she could feel trying to build. “I really need for you to promise me that you aren’t going to let him out of range, okay?”

Matt stood from his chair and gestured frantically at Foggy. “Jess-Jess, you’re seriously scaring the shit out of me. Tell me what’s going on here.” Foggy’s chair made a horrendous sound as he bolted up from the seat. On the phone, he heard the wet catch in her breathing and whispered “Jess, please don’t cry.”

“I’m not,” she snarled back, but Matt knew her well enough to know when she wanted to. “Goddamn it…”

** _Mod issued invitation to Group – Peter Parker Protection Squad_ **

** _Accepted! User added to Group_ **

Kare-Bear:

need a favor

big favor

Penny & Dime:

?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My ADD is just fucking nuts right now, so the updates on this are going to slow down to like, once a month, but we shall carry on!

“Okay, what’s the best way to put this? I think…yeah, I think…” Foggy said, falsely bright and cheerful. “ _ Absolutely the fuck not _ .”

Matt was completely silent, which was worrying in and of itself.

Karen pleaded with puppy dog eyes that were completely wasted on Matt – though she knew the tone of her voice would translate well enough. “He’ll take such good care of him, Matt, and he’s really good with kids! And-and dogs!”

Exasperated, Foggy turned to Matt and said, “He shot you  _ in the head _ !”

“I was wearing a helmet,” Matt pointed out mildly, more to drive Foggy nuts than to really make a counterargument.

He wasn’t disappointed – Foggy made a sound that suggested he was dying. “I did not just hear you say that. Matthew Murdock, you  _ did not _ really just say-”

“Alright, alright,” he said, to soothe them both. “This argument is completely pointless right now. I’m not making a decision that huge without any of Jessica’s input. I doubt I can make her love the idea of shipping Peter out of the city with a total stranger, anyway.”

He tried to sound neutral, calm. Karen squeezed his hand.

He was freaking out and none of this was even a little bit okay and this man was a  _ serial killer _ who hunted people like them, and Matt and Jessica were endangering their son’s life just by fucking  _ existing _ . The rage which was normally so readily available to comfort him was nowhere to be found – cold, mindless terror had filled every space it usually occupied.

Even Fisk hadn’t made Matt feel this kind of fear. Fisk had set his eyes on Foggy and Karen, and yes, that was terrifying. He loved them and worried for their safety. But Foggy and Karen were both adults with a certain ability to take care of themselves. Dare he say it, but Matt even considered them to have a higher than average capability of taking care of themselves. They were smart, situationally aware, and had good people skills. If nothing else, Matt trusted them to keep themselves alive long enough for him to arrive and beat the shit out of whatever was endangering them.

But Peter was a helpless child who didn’t know anything about Daredevil or Jessica Jones, and they were going to have to give him an explanation for why every adult in his life had started collectively freaking the fuck out about this.

Shouldn’t he just leave out the bits about Daredevil? Wasn’t it better to give him this information slowly, so that they weren’t overwhelming him with this flood of secrets his parents had been keeping from him?

“Absolutely not,” Foggy said harshly, startling Matt out of his thoughts.

He blinked. “Oh. Did I say that out loud?”

“You very much did. And no, you will not leave out ‘the bits about Daredevil’. That child worships Daredevil and he worships  _ you _ , Matt. There’s no reason for you to keep hiding this now that Jess will have to tell Peter the truth about her own powers anyway.”

“It’s-it just seems like a lot of information to dump on a seven year old,” Matt said, somewhat lamely. He knew he was making excuses, but Karen was the only person he’d ever willingly told the truth to.

Father Lantom had made the connections himself, the Defenders had all found out because of the unfortunate circumstances of their meeting, and Foggy only knew because he’d nearly died in his own living room.

“Matt,” Foggy said gently. “If you keep this from him even after Jessica tells him the truth, Peter isn’t going to feel shocked and overwhelmed when he learns the truth. He’ll feel like you  _ betrayed,  _ Matt. And he  _ will _ learn the truth, because I’m not going to let you lie to your son forever.”

“I wouldn’t lie forever!” he protested. “We both know that I’ll get too old to be Daredevil one day anyway.”

“ _ Matt _ ,” he said, in a tone that told him Foggy was rolling his eyes. “Lying to him about the past is still lying to him – you of all people should know that.”

Matt sighed. “Yeah, I do. It’s just…I sort of agree with Jess,” he finally admitted. “I feel like…by telling him the truth, I’m stealing a piece of innocence from him.”

“Wow, that’s some fucked up Catholic bullshit going on in both of your heads,” Foggy answered mildly, with a hint of laughter in his voice. “I’m honestly surprised that Jess was the one to get started on that first. Surprised, impressed, and more than a little concerned, actually.”

“What?” Matt said, a little blankly.

He can sense the motion of Foggy waving a hand through the air. “We’ve already confirmed that I’m not a good Catholic, but as I’ve reminded you before, my theological education isn’t  _ completely _ hopeless. We aren’t talking about the Tree of Knowledge here, Matt. This is not some forbidden fruit that you’re feeding him. You aren’t going to impart him with Original Sin by telling him the whole truth,” Foggy said, with a small snort at the dramatic edge to that statement. “Though I’d like it noted that I reject the premise that you can shame and diminish someone with knowledge.”

“So noted, counsellor,” Matt said, smiling because he knew Foggy was trying to amuse him on purpose.

“What I’m trying to say here is that Peter is not innocent because he possesses a lack of knowledge, Matt. He’s probably the smartest kid I’ve ever met and he’s barely old enough to tie his own damn shoes. He’s innocent because he possesses a lack of cynicism. You and Jess telling Peter that not  _ only  _ do his heroes  _ exist _ in his world, but they live with him and created him and  _ love him _ won’t do anything to change that. Probably the opposite, to be honest.”

Matt laced his hands together, fingers pressed thoughtfully to his mouth. After a moment of silence, he said, “Thanks, Fog.”

“Made you feel a little better?” he teased.

“Yeah, you did. Now can you repeat that speech to Jess when she gets here?”

\---

“Not one word, not one more goddamn word out of you.” Matt straightened up in the chair as he heard Jessica’s voice, her distinctive stomping footsteps drawing closer and closer to the officer. “You made him run around half of this goddamn city while you were on a wild fucking goose chase-”

There was another woman’s voice, higher and just as laced through with tension. “Jess, I really  _ am _ sorry-”

“What did I say about talking?” Jessica snarled, her tone so furious it had Matt flinching from two hundred feet away.

He was already there by the time the trio of people walked up to the door, holding the office open for them. He raised his brows in Jessica’s general direction and said, “You’re early.”

“What can I say?” she replied, all deadpan. A thread of relief spooled through her voice at either the sight or maybe the sound of him. “I just can’t stay away from you, Murdock.”

“Weren’t you killed at Midland Circle?” Trish asked him curiously.

Copying Jess’s deadpan to an almost terrifying effect, Matt said “I got better.”

Behind him, Foggy choked on air, coughing to disguise the sudden surge of hysterical laughter that was rising up. Matt hid a wince.  _ Oof. Sorry, pal _ .

Quietly, the strange male – Matt assumed that was Trish’s friend Erik, the one who’d asked Jessica for help – murmured “Woah” as the three of them stepped into the office. Interestingly enough, the man seemed to relax slightly. He held himself with less tension. That was unusual. Normally encountering the blind made people at least a little uncomfortable. Louder, almost reverently, Erik asked “What are you guys made of?”

“Now what are you going on about?” Jess asked impatiently, flopping down into one of the chairs at a conference table in the main waiting area.

“Remember when I told you that being near you was like taking aspirin? I wasn’t feeding you a line, Jones.” Erik made a gesture encompassing both Matt and Jessica. “The two of you together? That shit’s like a Vicodin, man. I’ve never been this comfortable  _ in my life _ . Whatever you two are made of, it’s the  _ good shit _ .”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Matt asked, tilting his head at Jessica so that she would know the question was meant for her rather than Mr. Good Shit over there.

“He’s got powers, Murdock. Has this…bad guy radar, I guess,” she said, sounding disinterested. “He gets a headache whenever a shitty person walks by.”

Trish huffed. “He practically had a seizure when Salinger caught him – it’s the reason we knew he was such bad news.”

“Yeah, but these two are the opposite of that,” Erik said, turning his head to glance between them. “You guys aren’t looking for a roommate, are you?”

“Forgive me if I have a hard time taking you at face value,” Jess drawled, rolling her eyes. “I’m hardly the poster child for justice and good. And Murdock’s a real boy scout, but he isn’t a saint.”

Matt snorted lightly at the irony hidden in that statement, rubbing a hand over his mouth to hide the shit-eating grin Jess always managed to bring out in him.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Erik explained tiredly. “It’s…I can’t walk past a man and know that he’s ten seconds from robbing a bank. It’s a sliding scale of pain and it tells me how bad their intentions are. But the two of you…”

“I’ve never meant well in my life,” Jess asserted firmly.

“Oh, that’s not true!” Trish protested, sounding more than a little put out.

Erik shook his head. “Your brain doesn’t lie, sweetheart.”

“Call me sweetheart again,” she said flatly. “And see what happens.”

“The statement stands,” he said, raising his hand in a gesture of surrender. “You’ve got a bad attitude, for sure, but you’re filled with good intentions, Jones. Just like your boyfriend is.”

Almost on cue, Matt and Jess snorted at the exact same time. “Well that’s…terrifying,” Trish concluded. “Uh, when did you guys start dating?”

“Never, we banged this one time eight years ago,” she said, enjoying the way that made Trish’s eyes bulge out of her head.

“He’s the guy…?”

“Who knocked me up despite being the drunkest human being I’ve ever encountered?” she said with an unholy glee that filled Matt with existential fear. And Foggy said he said no survival instincts. “Yep, this here is the man who is real living proof that whiskey dick is a problem which may be overcome.”

“ _ Jessica _ ,” Matt scolded, face twisting between laughter and horror. Behind him, Karen hid her face in her sleeve to muffle her laughter. Which was nice of her, because Foggy wasn’t even  _ trying _ . “Stop telling people that.”

“You were too drunk to remember anything. I can make up whatever crazy shit I want, and you have no way of knowing if it’s a lie or not,” she said smugly.

“Wait, so…so you never even introduced us!” Trish said, outraged. “You knew he was the father of your child and you never even said!”

“That’s my fault,” Matt said easily. “I had no idea I was a father, and Jess was put in a rather awkward position, given the circumstance of Peter’s birth.”

_ Oh, no. Here we go.. _ . Jessica thought, watching Trish’s eyelids soar upwards. “ _ Peter _ ?” She whirled on her adoptive sister. “ _ Peter _ ?!”

“That is my son’s name, yes,” Jessica said coolly.

“So-so you got him back and you were just never going to let me see him?” she asked, voice trembling as she blinked stray teardrops from her eyes. “You were just going to hide him from me and let me think I’d lost my nephew  _ forever _ ?” There was real, true grief in her eyes. She looked almost hysterical with it. Jess had never seen Trish this upset, even when Kilgrave nearly made her kill herself. 

Unfortunately for her, Jess could twist just about every emotion she had back into rage, including her own guilt and pain. “You lost any right to call yourself his aunt when you’re the reason his grandmother is dead,” she growled. “Who knows? You might decide that his  _ mother _ is dangerous one day, too. Gonna shoot me in front of him, Trish?”

“She  _ was _ dangerous!” Trish said fiercely, despite her tears. “She was hurting people and she was your mother! You couldn’t see how dangerous she was!”

“ _ YOU SHOT HER IN FRONT OF ME _ !” Jess roared, going hoarse with the volume of her screams. Her eyes glittered with unshed tears, diamond bright and just as hard. “She was gonna turn herself in. She wanted to have one last good day with me before they locked her in the Raft for the rest of her life and then you came, high on that self-righteous attitude, because  _ Trish always knows what’s best _ , and  _ Murdered. Her. In. Front. Of. Me _ !!”

“I…” Trish didn’t look quite so confident of her moral high ground anymore.

But the three of them had grown steadily more familiar with Jessica’s moods and they all knew she wasn’t done yet. “What’s gonna happen if you decide that  _ I’m _ dangerous too, huh, Trish? You gonna shoot me in front of my son?”

“That’s different,” she said weakly. “You’re-Jessica, you’re  _ you _ . You wouldn’t hurt somebody. You’re not a killer, Jess.”

“Oh, well we both know that’s a lie,” Jess said coldly, and she flinched.

Trish opened her mouth to reply and Jess made an angry, dismissive motion with one arm. Jessica stared up at the ceiling, as though calling on a higher power for patience. Or maybe just reeling in the urge to punch her former sister.

“You know, it’s taken me years, and now that I’ve seen it, I have no idea why it’s taken this long,” she said quietly. Then, with empty brutality in her voice, “You’re a child. You’re a child and you’ve always been a child, Trish. I guess we can thank Dorothy for that, too.”

“I’m a child because I want the world to be a better, safer place?” Trish demanded incredulously. “I’m a child because I don’t want people to suffer needlessly when I can go out there and do something about it?”

“You’re a child because you think that if you push back at the world hard enough, you can make it bend the way you want it to,” she said harshly. “And you refuse to see that all you’re really doing is breaking things!” Jessica held her hands out in front of Trish’s face, small slender fingers spread open, the nails all neat and trimmed down. The hands of an unromantic, unglamorous woman. The opposite of her sister in many ways. “If that was all it took, I could do that, too, Trish!”

“You  _ can _ , don’t you see that?!” she pleaded, all confidence and optimism. “You could change the world, Jessica, if you just  _ tried _ . You’ve spent all these years trying to pretend you’re not special, trying to kid yourself that you’re ordinary and ignoring your potential. That’s the real difference between us.” 

“No, it’s not,” Jess snarled. “The difference is, when I know I’m going to break things, I can fucking  _ control _ myself!”

“OKAY,” Foggy said, in his loudest, calmest voice. “This is not something we are going to resolve overnight, and we still need to have a plan for Peter’s safety. Jess, do you have any other information on Salinger we need to know?”

“Yeah,” she said with a snort. “This is one sick asshole we’re dealing with. Arrogant, too.”

Matt murmured “We’ve dealt with psychopaths and criminal masterminds before.” He was trying to sound reassuring, trying to calm the angry-fast beat of her heart. “A serial killer isn’t exactly new.” He paused, internally wondering how he should phrase the question. “You must’ve found something today…”

"Yeah? What do I smell like, Murdock?" she said sharply, her tone its most challenging. "Come on, you know what it is. Just say it."

It came out all in one breath. He'd been trying to ignore it, trying to breathe past it the whole time, telling himself that couldn't possibly be what that sickly sweet smell was. "Dead bodies."

“Jesus Christ,” Foggy breathed.

Jess nodded. “Got it in one, bloodhound. We are here – two hours later than we could’ve been, I might add – because I spent ten minutes down a hole filled with six inches of water and a whole lotta vacuum sealed baggies filled with dismembered body parts!”

“Jessica,” Matt breathed.

“I lived,” she said, answering him under her breath. A clever habit Jess had grown into when she had something to say that she only wanted Matt to hear.

“It was a trap for me,” Trish said miserably. “He put some kind of gas trap down in his dumping ground. He knew if it were a choice between Jess’ life and catching him, I’d choose her.”

“Yeah, I’d hope so,” Foggy said, with just enough of an edge of sarcasm to get a small smirk out of Jess.

Karen stood and said “It’s 2:30, guys”, which meant nothing to Trish and Erik, but Matt faced Jessica. “You wanna get him? You could probably use the pickup.”

She scrubbed a hand through her hair. “I can’t touch him, Murdock. Not after…”

Matt sat up. “It’s my day anyway, I can give you time to clean up…?”

Trish immediately sat straighter in her borrowed chair, eyes bright and shining. “Peter? Are you getting Peter from school? I can do it!”

“No,” Matt and Jess said simultaneously, though in different tones.

Foggy shuddered. “ _ Please _ stop doing that,” he said, sincerely terrified. “It’s like you’re both married and twins and like…mind-melded super mutants or something. It’s so goddamn creepy.”

“Why?” the two of them said innocently, because they were both horrible.

Foggy swore and made the sign of the cross as he retreated to his office with Erik and Trish – an act which he narrated, loudly.

Karen nudged Matt. “I’ll do the pickup, okay?” Lower, she murmured next to his ear. “You should talk to Jess about my offer.”

Jess called after her. “Can you pick up Tessa on your back? I left her with my neighbor Malcolm and I…we should have her here. If-if we’re going to tell him.”

_ If he gets upset _ , was her unspoken sentence. About the powers, about Daredevil, and the guy possibly hunting and stalking him – she wasn’t sure which would upset Peter the most. “One good girl, coming up!”

As soon as Karen was out the door, Jess narrowed her eyes at Matt. “What are you supposed to tell me?”

Matt sighed. “You’re not going to like it. She might have a point, but you’re not going to like it.”

“Gee, Matt, the last time I liked something that happened in my life was…oh, I dunno, the early aughts,” she said, impatient.

“Not true,” he said. “It happened last month.”

“Well…yeah, I suppose,” she agreed, with her signature rapid-fire smile. “Just spill it already.”

“We have this…acquaintance,” Matt said finally, after a thoughtful pause. “Who would be able to hide Peter for a little while, out of the city. He’s military trained, special forces, and he’s actually great with kids. Dogs, too, Peter could keep Tessa with him if he really wanted to.”

Jess’s eyes roamed his face. “What aren’t you telling me?” she said, staring into the red lenses. “Because I know lawyers and I know Matt Murdock, and you’re talking to me like a lawyer right now. What did you leave out?”

“We’re not exactly friends, but Karen’s gotten to know him pretty well and he and I have an…understanding. Where he stays out of the city and doesn’t try to shoot me in the head again and I don’t try to get him arrested and put in jail anymore.” At her open-mouthed silence, he clarified “Because he’s the Punisher.”

“OH,  _ fuck no _ !” she cried, standing up from the chair, and from the office, Foggy yelled “See, that’s what I said! You shoulda listened to me!”

“Jessica…”

She grabbed his arm to silence him, hissing at Matt in a lower voice so that the sound wouldn’t carry, “You cannot tell him that you’re Daredevil and that you don’t kill people because they deserve second chances, and then send him off to the Punisher, Murdock! Just-fucking – no. No! Not in a million years!”

“Okay,” he agreed easily, shocking Jess into pausing the rapid pace she was beginning around the room.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he repeated. “This wasn’t my plan, it was Karen’s. I can see her point, but I wasn’t agreeing to anything without you. You say no, end of discussion.”

Jessica flopped back into the chair, sighing loudly. “You know, I’m kinda sad we’re only attracted to each other when we’re blasted, this could work really out.” She blinked and reexamined that statement. “Or we could kill each other. Or I could get knocked up again and we’d make the actual Antichrist this time.”

His nose wrinkled. “Yeah, I’m a little suspicious of this theory Danny and Karen have going that all of our children would be…”

“Peter-perfect?” she asked dryly. “I know. Honestly, that’s what has me convinced number two would be the spawn of the devil – no pun intended, this time. The genetic lottery doesn’t roll numbers that lucky twice in a row.”

Abruptly, the phone in Matt’s pocket said “ **Karen. Karen. Karen** .”

Flicking it open, he said “Hey, what’s up? Did you have trouble getting into Jess’ building?”

There was a short pause, but the silence was enough for Matt’s ears to pick up the sound of a wet gulp, a familiar snuffling. His heart started dropping.

Then Karen wept into the phone, trying to hold in her frantic sobbing. “He-he took him, Matt! He just took his hand and  _ walked away with him _ , right in front of me!” Her voice broke and she sobbed harder. Chairs crashed and broke on the ground as Jessica stood up, trembling all over. “I don’t even know what he said to him – Peter looked so scared, Matt!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, guys :(


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOOOOOOIIIIIIIII-

Distantly, Jessica heard Nelson speaking on the phone, hissing at Danny. “I honestly don’t give a shit where you are right now, I need you and Colleen to get your asses on the first plane back to Manhattan.”

“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” Danny asked, sounding like he was stumbling around whatever area he was standing in.

“The Peter Parker Protection squad just got a hell of a lot less theoretical,” Foggy answered grimly. “There’s a creepy guy who murders people with powers – long story short, he got pissed at Jessica gathering evidence against him and kidnapped Peter as his collateral to keep her from beating him to a pulp.”

She was barely paying attention – to Foggy on the phone with Danny and Colleen, to Matt speaking (angrily) with Trish and Erik, to the world around her at all.

They never should’ve taken him back. The reality of not having him with her had made Jessica sick every day, and yet, it’s the only thought on her mind now. They should never have brought him back into their lives. What kind of chance did any ordinary child stand having parents with lives like theirs? Now that the moment had already arrived, Jess could see that they were always going to end up here – it was destined to happen from the moment they brought him into their world.

Abruptly, she yanks Trish out of the conversation she’s having with Matt. “I want everything on Salinger – every scrap of information you have, if you’ve got so much as a used Kleenex, I want it!”

Hesitantly, because her last exchange with Jess hadn’t gone so well, Trish pulls a USB drive from her jeans. “It’s not a lot,” she tells her sister apologetically. “On paper, he looks like a model citizen.”

Erik added “He doesn’t even have a real job, Jones. He seems to spend all his time collecting degrees that he doesn’t use.”

It isn’t the almost redundant list of education diplomas that catch Jessica’s eye on the flash-drive. It’s his  _ photo _ . Because despite not seeing Salinger today, Jess realized that she has seen this man before – spoke to him, even.

“Oh my god,” she breathed, “Matt- MATT!”

Half annoyed with her – she knew damn well she didn’t have to yell to get him to hear her – and half frantic with terrified worry, Matt snapped “ _ What _ ?!”

“Does Peter have asthma?” she demanded.

Matt blinked at her for a moment, truly confused by this utterly absurd question. “Yeah,” he said, wondering if his co-parent had completely gone off the rails. “Yeah, Jess, you said that he does.”

“No, Matt,” she barked. “I mean, you listened to his lungs – did they sound like the lungs of someone who has asthma?”

“No, they didn’t,” Matt answered slowly. “Jessica, what-”

“Oh my god.” Before he made her explain what the hell she was freaking out about, Jess ordered “Pull on my arm.”

If he were in a better mood, he and Foggy would probably be making ‘pull my finger’ jokes. Instead, he just said “Jessica…”

“Pull. My. Arm.  _ Matthew _ !” she barked, making Erik jump nearly a foot in the air.

So, he does it. He was afraid for his son’s life, he was worried about Jessica’s sanity slippage, and so Matt let her hold his hand and pulled on her fucking arm.

Her voice shook, so subtly he was certain the others didn’t hear it. “Nope, harder than that.”

And again. “Harder.”

“No. As hard as you can.”

Matt yanked at her hand with all his strength and Jess toppled sideways slightly, then drew away from him again, hands resting at the top of her head in disbelief. “Oh god. Oh god.” She turned away from Matt to look back at the computer, where Trish’s files on Salinger were still on display. Under her breath, she murmured “How did you know?”

“How did Salinger know what?” He was trying hard to follow along with her, but Jess seemed to be going all over the place.

“Not Salinger,” Jessica said, hands pressed to the sides of her skull. “Peter. Peter knew.  _ Oh my god _ – Matt, he knew and he went with him anyway!”

“…I-I don’t understand, Jessica,” he admitted. Her pulse was pounding, like terror. “What are you saying?”

“I knew it, I  _ knew _ I was holding you too tightly…”

“Jessica? What are you talking about?” Foggy asked gently.

“He’s in so much danger,” she told him, congested like she was trying not to cry again. “Matt, he’s in even more danger than we thought. Peter has superpowers, Matt. And he knew that Salinger was bad – he knew that we were in danger, but he still went with him anyway!”

Behind the blood red lenses, Matt’s eyes widened.

_ “Everything is just so bright _ !”

“ _ Everything is so  _ _ loud _ !”

It was there, he realized. The parallels were there in front of him the whole time, but Matt wasn't able to notice because it didn't appear in exactly the same way. And now their son, who had undetermined superpowers, was in the hands of a serial killer who murdered people with superpowers – had gone with this man willingly, if Jessica’s theory was correct.

Gently, Foggy said, “Danny has locked onto a remote connection from a security camera near Peter’s school. Salinger took him in a gray minivan heading southwest toward the docks.”

Jess could not look Matt in the eyes, obviously. But she knew he definitely had a sense of when someone was focusing on him. “Let’s go.”

“You’re taking him with you?” Trish asked, surprised, and Matt had to resist the urge to bare his teeth at her. “I want to help you find him!”

“Stop antagonizing Salinger,” Jessica replied shortly. “You can help me if you don’t get Peter killed in a fit of rage. Until then, stay the hell out of my way and don’t tell anyone he’s got powers. I have no idea why Peter  _ chose _ to go with him, but I don’t think that Salinger actually knows he isn’t a normal child.”

\---

Just as he spotted Karen across the street, Peter felt a burning, tingling itch spread out over the back of his neck. The man from before, the one with the reptilian eyes who’d spoken to his mother, was standing right at the bottom of the school steps and looking right at him.

Feeling a terrible pit in the bottom of his stomach, Peter decided to gather up the dregs of his courage and started walking down the steps. He knew what he had to do now – he’d been dodging and hiding from it, but now that he’d seen this guy for the second time, he knew what had to. The trouble was having the guts to do it.

Falsely innocent, the man said, “Aren’t you Jessica Jones’ son?”

“Yes,” Peter said, and glanced over at Aunt Karen. She was staring at him from across the street, and she couldn’t possibly know what kind of danger they were in, but she was starting to look more and more worried. The stranger’s presence still felt like a hot knife sitting against his jugular.

“Isn’t she picking you up?” he asked with equally false worry.

“N-no,” Peter said. “My Aunt Karen is. That’s her over there.”

Karen is trying to cross the street now, probably concerned about him talking to the stranger. Swallowing heavily, Peter asked “If I go with you, will you promise not to hurt her?”

The surprise cleared away some of the mask of bland innocence from the man’s face. “Why would you think I’m taking you with me?”

“Because you’re here for me,” he said simply. He wasn’t sure before, but now that he was here again at Peter’s school, it was clear that the evil man was looking for Peter personally. Biting his lip until he was sure he wouldn’t cry, Peter added, “But you have to promise not to hurt her.”

The man cocked his head, more lizard-like than ever. “Alright, boy. I promise not to hurt her.” He squinted down at Peter, leaning toward him slightly, and Peter shrank back, repulsed by the knife of terror digging into his skin. Curiously, the man asked, “Is Erik Gelden your father?”

“My fa-father’s name is M-Matt. Matt Murdock,” Peter said stoutly, despite his teeth chattering in terror.

“Hm,” the man said, though he sounded suspicious. “Let’s go then.”

“Okay,” he mumbled, with one last look at Aunt Karen. She looked stunned, terrified.

“Peter!” she called, and took a step toward them. “Peter!”

His skin crawled as the man pulled something from the pocket of his coat. Dark and matte, its shape left Peter taking shallow breaths. A gun. He squeaked “You said you wouldn’t hurt her!”

Almost amused, or as amused as this man was capable of feeling, he said “She isn’t afraid I’ll use it on  _ her, _ Peter.”

Peter stumbled as they walked away, struggling to breathe, and left Karen standing there on the other side of the street, face white. She was crying.

\---

**Group Chat – Peter Parker Protection Squad**

Mods: Foggy-Bear, Kare-Bear

Members

Colleen is Fantastic

Dragon-Fister

I’m Not Daredevil

Jess for Success

Mister Cage

Penny & Dime

Save Me, Claire!

Kare-bear:

:imp: :baby: :ghost: :compass:

:snake: (:dart:)

Penny & Dime:

:dagger: ?

Kare-bear:

:compass:

:teddybear: // !!! :eye: :eye: :eye: !!!

Save Me, Claire!:

Karen, who is that?

What are you doing?

Penny & Dime:

:watch: ???

Kare-bear:

est. 15-20 mins?

Penny & Dime:

:imp: / :punch: ?

:skull: :dagger: :dagger: ?

Kare-bear:

:imp: / :punch: = :compass:

:skull: = :star: :sparkle: :sparkle:

Foggy-bear:

Christ Karen

I hope you know what you’re doing

Kare-bear:

:cowboy: :imp: :baby:

:footprints: // :four_leaf_clover:

Foggy-bear:

I'm not an idiot

I know what you're doing

You do realize that even if you pull off some kind of daring rescue, if Salinger is killed right in front of him, Matt will never forgive you?

Penny & Dime:

:imp: :baby: :angel:

:cowboy: :skull:

Foggy-bear:

Whatever the fuck that means

….

Get him back

Please

Kare-bear:

Do you think you could talk Matt into doing an interview for television?

Foggy-bear:

I’m sorry, I have whiplash

WHAT

Kare-bear:

I know some of the correspondents for PIX 11

I want the whole city freaking out about Peter

It will make it harder for Salinger to move him around

But Jess isn’t exactly tv-friendly and Matt will look more sympathetic

Foggy-bear:

Have the blind man cry that he can’t find his son?

Yeah that would be pretty effective

He won’t need convincing, if it helps Peter he’ll do it

Dragon-Fister:

Can you not just tell the police that Salinger kidnapped him?

Save Me, Claire!:

No, they can’t

The more they antagonize him, the more danger Peter is in

And I doubt Salinger is keeping Peter right in this own apartment, so even if the police followed up on the report, they still wouldn’t find him

Mister Cage:

Our best bet is to find him ourselves and help Jess gather more evidence

Foggy-bear:

Let me and Karen do the paperwork bullshit

Just focus on finding him

Penny & Dime:

:cowboy: :skull: // :eye: // :imp: :baby:

Kare-bear:

:heart: :heart: :heart:

\---

The minivan that Danny helped them track down was abandoned in a nearly empty lot away from the oh-so-helpful security cameras, unlocked and with the keys still sitting in the ignition.

“Anything?” Jess asked Matt quietly, watching him prowl around it.

“He-he was crying,” Matt admitted with difficulty. “But I don’t think he was actually hurt. There’s no blood anywhere, not even a little bit.”

Jessica’s fists tightened, and she did a short rough lap around the whole vehicle. Now that the haze of shock and terror had passed, the rage she so often held back was there to greet her again and it was a towering, unconquerable thing in her blood. Salinger had fucked with the wrong family.

If – no,  _ when _ –  _ when _ she got her son back, she was going to pulverize every bone in his body down to powder and leave him alive to really  _ enjoy _ it. Then she was going to sit Peter down and tell him everything – the rich history of his parents, and how and why he had apparently been born with these abilities, whatever they were.

“He’s strong,” Jess said out loud. “He’s really strong.”

“Peter or Salinger?” Matt said, fully aware of where her mind was right now.

“Peter. Salinger does some kind of wrestling program at a rec center.” She snorted, jaw tight. “Works with kids. But he’s only as strong as any other guy is. Peter is…Peter is at least as strong as you are, Matt. I don’t know what else he can do, how else he knew that Salinger was dangerous, but he’s got some of my strength. He might end up as strong as I am. Stronger even, like Mom.”

Restless, Matt ran a hand through the fluffed up mess of his hair and said, “He has some kind of extrasensory power, I’m sure of it.”  _ Everything is just so bright _ . “Maybe with his vision? I’m not sure, but it’s my best guess. I don’t-I don’t know how resistant to injury he is. Maybe a lot, maybe a little, maybe not at all.”

A bit desperately, Jess asked “Can you tell which way they were going after he dumped the car?”

Matt shook his head. The scent was all around the vehicle and they hadn’t really sat inside long enough for it to bond to anything in the car. It was clearly meant specifically for the purpose of capturing Peter and getting away, nothing more.

His face was tilted at its usual downward angle, the way Matt often did when he was paying close attention to something. More thoughtfully, Jess said “Salinger thinks he has this whole thing wrapped into a nice neat bow. He has Peter, so Trish and I can’t gather any more evidence. We can’t even fight back in case he hurts him. We’re sitting ducks, lambs waiting for him to slaughter us.”

“But?” Matt prompted, face turned toward the savage determination in her voice.

“He doesn’t have all the facts, doesn’t understand all the moving parts. We have an advantage that he doesn’t know about.”

“What advantage?”

“Daredevil,” she said fiercely, and Matt’s brows lifted. “He has power over me, over Trish and Erik, because he  _ knows _ us, there’s nowhere for us to hide from him. He may know Daredevil, but nobody has the devil boy’s real identity. You’re the only secret we’ve got, the only thing this asshole doesn’t expect.”

_ Those Murdock boys, they got the devil in ‘em _ .

Matt grinned, a savage bloodlust written harshly into the line of his face and there it was, Jessica could see the devil right there. She grinned back. She was destruction and devastation sitting in a woman’s skin. For all his dramatics, the devil didn’t bother her, he never had.

And somewhere in this city their son, a child born of the devil and a natural disaster, needed them to find him. If they had to tear it upside down, they would bring him home again.

\---

The place the man – Salinger, he said his name was, though he said it like Peter should already know that – the place Salinger brought him to was dark and sort of dirty. There was a mattress, and a very old television, and a sink and a toilet too, though the sink was kind of broken. It was also pretty cold there.

“Why are you doing this?” he said, staring blankly at the tv while it was on mute.

Salinger paused to examine him. “Your mother has not earned her abilities, Peter. She’s cheated. I’m just making it fair.”

“I…don’t really understand,” Peter said slowly, fear curling through his guts once more. With barely enough sound to whisper: “I just want my mom.”

“She should have thought of that before she and Patricia were so rude to me.”

Peter was left wearily watching Salinger leave.

Then, for a brief moment, his eyes lit up.

Frantically, he smashed the buttons beside the screen to turn the sound up and the pretty lady who was talking on news had a very serious face as she said “And this closely knit neighborhood is reeling with this tragedy. His father, local attorney Matthew Murdock at ‘Nelson, Murdock, and Page’ is here with us now. Mister Murdock, do you have a few words to say about what happened?”

Beside her, Dad looked really, really sad, chin tilted downwards with sadness. “Please,” he croaked, mouth trembling hard. “Whoever you are – I have no idea why you took my son. I don’t know why you took Peter away from me. But please don’t hurt him. He’s-he’s good boy.” Peter whimpered as Dad choked up, wishing he could reach out and let Dad pick him up again, his heart lodged up into his throat as Dad continued, “Peter’s so smart, and so kind. And I know-I know you’ll see that, too. Please don’t hurt him. Peter is my whole world.”

Still white faced and trembling the way she was when he’d walked away from her, Aunt Karen held up a picture of Peter. His class photo. “If you see anyone who looks like Peter,” she pleaded, “Please call the number on your screen. He’s seven years old, white, and has brown hair and brown eyes. He was wearing a blue jacket with a blue and red scarf, and he was carrying an Iron Man backpack.”

Her tears spilled over again, and rather fiercely, Aunt Karen said “Baby, if you can hear me, Mommy and Daddy are looking for you, Peter. We will never _stop_ looking.”

Peter shivered and gasped and gulped down his tears, as he watched Dad’s face twist into grief, hugging Aunt Karen, and he felt like he’d swallowed bits of glass.

The news anchor said “Little Peter is something of a celebrity, though you may not recognize him outside of his costume.”

They played various clips from social media, cellphone and camera footage showing him with Mom and Dad on Halloween – a miniature Iron Man leading a set of Justice League members, each one at least three times his size. The anchor was saying “This video of him with his parents and family went viral on Halloween night. As you can see, the Justice League is led by an Avenger and his aunt tells us that little boy is Peter. Again, that was Peter Parker, age 7, taken from his elementary school in broad daylight. That was a blue jacket, blue and red scarf, and an Iron Man backpack. If you see Peter or have any information about where he might be, please call the number on your screen or dial 911.”

He huddled against the bare mattress in the corner and clutched the scarf his mother had made him and the only day he’d ever been more miserable than this was the day Aunt May had died.

_ Mommy and Daddy are looking for you. We will  _ _ never _ stop _ looking. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, you look at a document and can only manage 30 words in a week, and sometimes you sit down and write 3000 words in a day. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Happy Holidays, guys :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short one, but i'm hoping to have the next chapter updated a bit sooner than this one was

There was absolutely nothing they wanted to do less than go home and get some sleep, but Luke managed to talk them into it anyway. “You can’t run around the city until one of you passes out – Danny and Colleen are on Hong Kong time right now anyway, I’m sure they won’t mind taking over with me for a few hours.”

While sleeping was the last thing on their minds, they knew Luke was right – they couldn’t just scramble around hoping they caught a hint of Peter somewhere. They had to think about this strategically and wandering around aimlessly until they were both exhausted wouldn’t help Peter at all.

Matt was looking  _ really _ shifty though. Jess grabbed his arm before he could walk away. Warningly, she said “Murdock…”

A touch too pleasant for the circumstances, he drawled, “Jones…?”

“Don’t go after him, Murdock,” she muttered, sounding genuinely concerned. “I’m serious – I didn’t wanna take Trish along, but if she hadn’t been there, I would’ve died, Matt. He’s careful and he’s smart and if we make him suspicious that someone is watching him, he could hurt Peter. I’m pretty sure he’s too clever to actually kill him, but…”

But, they both knew, there were  _ a lot _ of terrible things you could do to a person, even a child, before they died.

Matt sighed inaudibly, but his shoulders sagged slightly, telling Jess that she’d gotten her point across. “I promise I won’t go near him – not without you, anyway. Even if it could help me find him.”

“If he has the guts to return to his apartment tonight – not that I think he does – but if he goes back home, you’ll probably just find him going to sleep anyway. And I wouldn’t put it past him to have traps set up around the place meant for me.”

Voice lowered and head tilted in a direction which indicated the room behind him, Matt asked, “And what about your sister? What do you plan to do with her and her psychic friend Erik?”

Jess shrugged unhappily, sounding sarcastic and displeased as she said “Slumber party. Yay.”

Brows lifted, he asked “Really?”

“They’re basically homeless – Trish wants to keep away from her mother Dorothy and Erik…yeah, is basically homeless, from what I can tell. It’s either bring them home with me and grill them about Salinger and what they know or I let them wander around, probably finding more trouble to get into, knowing Trish.”

She doesn’t really remember taking a cab home or paying the driver. She just kind of came back to conscious awareness in the elevator ride back up to her floor, staring at the ugly cracked flooring. It was, she realized with some distant nausea, the same flooring Hope’s parents died on. Jess was aware that Erik and Trish had been talking – either  _ to _ her or  _ about _ her, she honestly didn’t care either way – but she was kind of tuning them out the whole time. Not even on purpose, her brain just couldn’t seem to hold words and sentences in her mind at the moment.

Trish made a sound of frustrated surprise as Jess pulled out her keys to unlock the door. “Ha! So you just moved down the hall from your office! Malcolm said you went home at the end of the day, he didn’t say you were so close.”

“He already knew I didn’t want you near Peter. He made me a promise,” Jess pointed out dully, and her sister flinched.

Erik grimaced, looking distinctly uncomfortable to witness this interaction, but declined to comment on it.

If Jess were in a better mood, she would’ve been able to cherish the expression of gobsmacked surprise on Trish’s face when she opened the door to the apartment – she’d never been a huge slob exactly, but the old one-bedroom had mostly been aggressively empty rather than actually  _ clean _ . Karen insisted their houses had to look like someone lived there rather than an industrial grunge bar (Matt) or a like the set of a stock photo (Jess), so there were potted plants in the living room and this weird water fountain in the dining room, and everything was very neat.

Not because Jessica was very neat, but because she now owned a blind dog and her son’s father was also blind and teaching themselves to keep things off the floor had suddenly become critically important.

Malcolm was still in the apartment, both typing on a laptop at the dining table and talking on the phone. Clearly he’d decided to get some work done when he realized that his dog-sitting duty had been extended due to circumstances. Looking up at their entrance, he mouthed, ‘gimme a sec’. He was probably on the phone with a client, judging by his narrowed-eye stare into the middle distance and the calculated set to his jaw.

“It’s your life, man,” she responded quietly, and Tessa’s ears perked up at the sound of her voice. She snapped her fingers to get the dog’s attention, feeling abruptly heartsick at the sight of her and swallowing down a lump in her throat.

Poor dumb dog. She didn’t even realize her boy might never come home again.

“Here, girl. Here, Tessa.” More confident in her own home than she even was a few days ago, Tessa darted straight to Jessica, wiggling happily as Jess stroked her ear and let her sniff her fingers. “Good girl, good girl.”

“You…got a dog,” Trish observed, strangled.

“She’s Peter’s dog,” Jess muttered. “And I didn’t get her, he  _ found _ her. Don’t leave anything on the floor – we finally got her to navigate without a lead. The two of you are going to sleep in my room.”

Erik coughed awkwardly, and Trish shook her head, blurting out “Oh, we’re not like…together, Jess.”

“I honestly don’t care,” she sighed. “I don’t want to see either of your faces for at least six hours, so you’re not getting the sofa. Feel free to get out of my sight as quickly as possible.”

Neither sister was aware of Malcolm hanging up his call and staring between the two women with concern. Scowling, Trish said “Why are we here if you’re so sick of us?”

Coaxing Tessa onto the couch beside her, Jess kept her voice even so that she didn’t scare the poor animal. “Because it’s pretty clear to me that if I let you wander around on your own, people end up getting hurt.”

She huffed and tried to turn around and walk out, but found that her path was blocked. “No,” Malcolm said evenly. “You don’t get to do that.”

“Do what? What have I done this time?” she asked sarcastically. “What crimes are you ready to place at my feet.”

With deadly calm, Malcolm said “You don’t get to act like the aggrieved party here, Trish. I told you – I  _ warned _ you not to get your sister involved in a problem this serious.”

“I didn’t  _ know _ she got Peter back!” she protested.

His brows raised. “Oh? Because her own safety isn’t important enough?”

She stuttered, wordless sounds before settling on “She isn’t a child! She can take care of herself!”

“Oh, I agree. But she isn’t invincible and neither are you, and Jessica seems to be the only one who understands that.”

“You, too?” Trish demanded. “So I shouldn’t help people and I shouldn act like a good little girl who's never had a special power?”

Baring his teeth is a surprisingly display of a not-smile, Malcolm said “You should realize that your sister is super-human, but the word ‘human’ still applies. You ask too much from her, and pretend that it doesn’t cost her anything to put herself in danger, and now when it’s had real world consequences, you behave as though asking you to stop and think is demanding too much of you.”

Jessica glanced over at him, visibly startled that he’d made this pronouncement.

Erik pulled on Trish’s arm, reading the tension uneasily. “Let’s go,” he muttered, dragging her toward the bedroom. “This guy makes my head hurt.”

From another person, that would be a random aside or a euphemism. From Erik, that sentence had a very specific meaning. “What, Malcolm?” Trish asked, blinking, almost amused. “You think Malcolm is evil?”

Almost dropping his phone, Malcolm choked “ _ What _ ?”

Absently, Jess replied “Erik has evil radar. It’s his special superpower. How bad is it?”

Erik fidgeted and said, “I dunno…like a 3, I guess?”

Jessica’s eyes turned to Malcolm and he suddenly felt like someone was examining his intestines – with a scalpel. He held his breath as their eyes met. Then Jess stretched her legs out on the couch and turned her head away again. “I trust my gut more than I trust your head.”

“It’s your house, man.”

Briefly, as Trish and Erik retreated to the master bedroom, Malcolm’s knees went slightly weak and he leaned against the door before pushing away, trying to breathe in and out at an even pace. “Thanks for the endorsement, I guess.”

“They bug me,” she said, petulant and petty, stroking Tessa’s ears.

He crouched next to the sofa so that he could talk to her without loaming above her – not that Jess had much to be scared of in little old him, but it made Malcolm feel less awkward, anyway. “Any leads at all?”

“None. They just  _ vanished _ .”

His heart clenched painfully in his chest as Jess stopped petting Tessa to press her palms to her eye sockets, face tilted toward the ceiling. He watched her breathe shakily, shoulders heaving. Fuck, it was so obvious, because he didn’t even remember the last time something felt as bad as seeing her in this much pain. Maybe the last time he’d seen her this distressed, he thought ruefully.

He pulled a bottle from the same cabinet she dug through the last time and poured them both a small share, clinking his glass against hers. Jess sat up and tossed it all back in one go, slapping the glass back onto the coffee table. When she could control her breathing, she lowered both hands and said, choked up, “Peter is like me.”

Confused, Malcolm said “Well, yeah. You’re his mom.”

“No,” she said, and used an exaggerated motion to make a fist. “He’s  _ like me _ .”

“Oh god.” His whole body seemed to spasm with anxiety.

“I don’t think Salinger knows…yet.” Snorting, Jess added, “ I didn’t even realize until after he was taken today.”

Her hands, limp at her sides, clenched briefly into fists before she relaxed again – at least outwardly. “…he’s at least as strong as a grown man by now.”

“Woah,” Malcolm breathed, awed. “And you really didn’t know?”

“I don’t know how strong a normal kid should be!” she huffed, without any real heat. “I thought he was just good at catching me by surprise, once or twice. A time or two, I thought I hugged him just a little too hard…but it never bothered him, not a bit.” With a hollow laugh, she added “But of course it wouldn’t.”

There was a pause before Malcolm, hesitantly, said “I’d like to help out. If there’s anything I can do…?”

“Keep taking care of my kid’s dog?” she said, half joking and half pleading.

“Of course. She’s a good girl, aren’t you Tessa?” he said with a bare smile, and then immediately frowned “Uh, where are you going to sleep? You gave Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum your bed.”

He couldn’t say ‘you should sleep in my bed’, because he couldn’t think of a less appropriate time to make some sort of move, and that offer would show way more of his hand than he was comfortable with.

“Peter’s bed,” she muttered, fingers scratching Tessa beneath the collar. “I guess I better pretend to sleep for a few hours so Luke doesn’t throw a fit.”

Malcolm had already learned the hard lesson of pushing Jess for more than she wanted to give. He squeezed her shoulder, even that brief contact feeling almost like forbidden fruit, and got up.

\---

Jessica wasn’t sleeping, because she’d known that she wouldn’t. Instead, Jess was thinking.

Not about the ways in which this day had gone wrong – even though part of her really wanted to – and not about what Peter might be going through right now. She couldn’t let herself think about that because if she let herself think about that, she was going to go back out to the liquor cabinet and clean out every bottle.

Jessica was thinking about her powers, about Peter’s powers.

Had her son known that he was special? If he was born this way, if he inherited these powers, maybe he just didn’t know what was different about him. Maybe he just didn’t realize…

But no. It seemed impossible to believe that her Peter, so smart and so clever, didn’t realize that he was different from the other children around him. Of course, that certainty came with the painful knowledge that their son must’ve been hiding his abilities on purpose. Trying to make himself look normal, because…because they were making themselves look normal – or as normal as a blind lawyer and a private detective could.

Across town, Matt was also thinking rather than sleeping. Or rather, he was remembering. 

He remembered being in a bed in the orphanage's infirmary, all day long, his head throbbing with pain as his newly sensitive skin rashed and blistered on the scratchy hospital-grade sheets. He was remembering the constant pain and terror of not being able to understand what was happening to him. 

Had Peter also experienced that pain? That terror? Maybe because he was born this way, he didn't have that memory of life Before his powers, but surely Peter, like his parents, would experience that wide gulf of certainty, that vast stretch between others and yourself, knowing that you could do things they would barely understand - that  _ you _ barely understood yourself. Did he feel isolated, the way he had? Resentful of their 'normal' lives? And how long had he realized that he was different?

How long had Peter already been hiding?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dialogue you recognize is probably from Jessica Jones season 3

All told, Jess was maybe asleep for less than an hour, but when she opened her eyes, her mind was made up.

It probably wasn’t the wisest plan she’d ever had, but never let it be said that Jessica Jones was wishy-washy. Briefly, she even considered taking Matt along with her, but quickly decided against it. Salinger was not quite as brilliant as he fancied himself, but Jess believed that he  _ was _ clever enough to make connections between Daredevil and Peter’s father if they were repeatedly within close contact with each other. Daredevil was an important ace up their sleeve and Jess wasn’t going to risk letting Salinger look too hard at Matt Murdock.

So, full of fury and with a chip on her shoulder, Jessica went to the gym where Salinger actually had the audacity to be teaching a bunch of fucking kids, as though he hadn’t stolen a boy just like one of these from the people who loved him! Well, maybe not  _ exactly _ like one of these, but an innocent kid all the same.

“I thought I might see you soon,” he said, with a smug smirk that made Jessica want to break his whole goddamn face. He saw the contained rage in her eyes and said, still dangerously smug considering who he was talking to, “Remember, Jones, if you kill me, you may never see your son again.”

“Maybe I can find out if I hit you hard enough,” Jessica growled, fists clenching, a dark part of her thrilling as the whites of Salinger’s eyes grew just ever so slightly wider.

“In front of all these witnesses?” he scoffed. “You’d be in prison, maybe for the rest of your life. You’ve got quite a record, you know.”

Jess glowered at him. “Listen to me, you worthless pig,” she said lowly, her volume in consideration of the children around them, hissing the syllables out: “I think you already understand that Peter is the one thing I really love, so I need you to believe me when I tell you that if you hurt my son, I will  _ kill _ you and there ain’t a thing that’s gonna stop me. I don’t give a shit how long I spend in prison, I’ll go  _ happily _ if I find out that you did  _ anything _ to hurt my kid.”

Like mother, like daughter, she supposed.

“As repulsive a woman as you are, I suppose you are a decent mother,” Salinger mused, and Jess snorted.

“Oh goody. Yeah, you’re really the endorsement I was looking for this whole time.” She gave him a hard stare, unrelenting. “Do we understand each other? I’m only playing nice as long as I think Peter is safe. If I think you’re anywhere close to hurting him – I won’t hesitate.”

“I have no problem returning what belongs to you, Ms. Jones,” he said, lip curling into a sneer. “Just as soon as you return what Patricia took from me.”

Jess eyed him in disgust. “Your little ‘trophies’, you mean? Your snuff book?”

A young boy interrupted their conversation, a somewhat meek-sounding child that said “Coach…th-the other kid took my partner.”

Sounding eerily genial, Salinger said “It’s alright, you don’t need a partner to improve. Practice your top-stance, okay?”

“O-okay,” the boy agreed, still sounding hesitant.

Jessica’s teeth ground into each other. This man had no fucking business being anywhere near a child. Salinger was staring at her, clearly registering her anger, and he looked amused.

He almost always did – as though he were a scientist, she thought with revulsion, and she were an especially fascinating species of butterfly pinned to a corkboard. Another one of the ants among his colony. “It really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“The idea of you being near a kid makes me sick,” she said bluntly, eyes narrowed.

“That’s funny, I could say the same thing about you,” he said coolly, the amusement falling away to reveal the icy disdain lurking beneath it. He gestured out to the mats, where the children were practicing with each other. “If you long to beat me, you only need to ask. The rules are simple. Though of course, you’d never bother to fight fair.”

“You don’t want me to do that,” Jessica scoffed, eyes rolling.  _ Because I want your head mounted on a wall somewhere _ .

“You can’t control yourself. You have no discipline,” Salinger said softly, with a strangely satisfied gleam in his eyes that made her want to shake him and keep shaking until he shrieked for her mercy – mercy she was finding in very short supply. “Just brute force.”

“And you want me to kick your ass, so that I won’t make trouble for you anymore,” she said, after another moment spent grinding down her molars. She doesn’t gesture at the parents filming on their smartphones but she doesn’t need to. “You think I’m gonna lose my shit in front of all these cameras.”

“It’s in your nature,” he stated, as though he were some sort of fucking expert on Jessica Jones. Which…she may have admitted that Kilgrave was, but not this slithering psychopath. “People wanna know the truth…especially yours.”

_ No, they don’t _ , she wanted to say.  _ They wanna know as much as they can stand hearing and not a thing more _ . But she didn’t, because Salinger was one of those people who couldn’t stand a single moment in the reality of Jessica’s truth. People like him were much more comfortable living in the world only as they saw it, and how close that was to the reality of what happened around them didn’t concern them overly much.

She sauntered out to the mat, gesturing with a hand, tone always just south of sarcastic. “School me. Wanna make sure I’m playing ‘ ** _fair’_ ** .”

And god, didn’t he just sound like a twisted version of Trish that way? Only children complained that life should be fair, children and adults who hadn’t really grown up yet. The rest of the world had already realized that  _ nothing _ was fair – you just tried to do your best with what you had, and hoped that everything broke even at the end.

Salinger looked more amused than ever before, but he got the kids to clear away from the mat. “Everybody over here – have a seat. Okay! You get disqualified for kicking, scratching, biting, hitting, or swearing,” he added, looking especially entertained as Jessica rolled her eyes again. “You slam your opponent’s body to the mat or you twist any body part out of it’s normal range of motion. Other than that, it’s pretty simple. The first person to pin their opponent to the mat wins.”

“You got it,” Jess said, looking and sounding bored.

“I won’t ask you to go easy on me, because I know you won’t.” He crouched down, looking somewhat like a crab in gray sweatpants. Fucking Christ. “Go.”

Oh, he had no idea. Jess had to go easy on  _ every _ human she’d ever hit. He couldn’t imagine the things she could do to the human body – if she wanted to. She stared at him, more unimpressed than ever at that stupid little crab dance.

Salinger sighed and stood. “Okay. You also get disqualified for passivity, if you don’t do anything.”

Mocking, she replied “Oh, I’m just waitin’ on you to show me some  _ moves _ .”

“Ah, okay.” Salinger crouched again, before surging forward, catching Jess by the legs and throwing her down, sending her to the mat face first before forcefully throwing her onto her back. She lay there, mostly without struggling. He taunted “You can’t hold back forever. It’s not you.”

He was strong and fast, for a human. But only for a human.

Jess brought a hand up and shoved him in the center of the chest, sending Salinger to the other side of the mat, flying ass over tits. Around them, the children clapped and cheered at this display but Jess felt her focus zero in on Salinger, predator to prey. Except that he kept making the mistake of believing that she was prey. She wasn’t even breathing harder. “All that practice and you still suck ass.”

She could see that moment his cool taunting twisted into dark anger, just before he charged at her, trying to surge forward the way he had the first time. All Jess had to do was take a little step to the side, lightly (for her) pushing at his arm to carry his momentum past her and send him tumbling back to the floor.

The cheering and clapping was louder this time, and Jess looked around, once again reminded that there were people watching and this was not just an exercise in relieving her pain and rage.

Scowling furiously, Salinger made a third charge at her, arms wrapping around Jessica’s waist. But this time, he found that he couldn’t even make her move from her standing position. Grabbing the back of his shirt, Jess tossed him aside the way she might throw her keys into a bowl, effortless and careless, sending him sprawling onto the ground.

When she picked him up by the neck like a wayward kitten, he hissed “All they see…is a cheater!”

She smirked with satisfaction as their audience exclaimed enthusiastically in the background. “Now who’s lying to themselves?”

And with that, she flipped him over and let him fall gracelessly back down to the mats again, Salinger so winded that he was clearly incapable of standing. Jessica paced around him like a caged lioness, waiting just a moment, letting him attempt to rise again before planting her boot on his chest.

“No body slams,” she drawled, unrepentant. “Guess I lose.”

“They’ll see who you are,” he snarled beneath his breath. “They’ll all see – you, and your unnatural son.”

“Let them. Just remember: I don’t mind going to jail. Not for him. And you’ll see me around.” She waltzed away, calling over her shoulder, “Class dismissed!”

The kids whooped and hollered as she walked off, thrilled with the mysterious woman dressed in leather who’d only stayed long enough to destroy the coach, without even breathing hard. She let herself smile, just a little.

By the time she was back in her own living room, Jess was covered in a cold sweat and resisting the urge to pace. Why had she done it, why didn’t she stop herself when she knew that Salinger was trying to goad her?

“Jess?” she heard Trish ask quietly from her bedroom doorway. “Is everything alright? Any news?”

“Oh, everything’s great,” she said sarcastically. “Except for when I can’t resist putting my son’s life in danger, everything’s just  _ peachy _ .”

“What do you mean?” she asked, alarmed by Jessica’s fatalist tone. “What happened?”

Though she gave Trish shit for her heroism without acknowledging that her actions have serious unintended consequences, Jess had to tell her the entire story about the way that she’d taunted Salinger in return for his attempt to bait her. “I humiliated him,” she whispered, recalling the toxic impotent fury in his face. Her stomach turned over and she relaxed her hand before she could crush her coffee cup. “And now Peter could get hurt, because I pissed off a psychopath.”

“Oh, that doesn’t mean…” Trish began hastily.

“No,” she said sharply. “Trish, you didn’t see the look on his face when those kids and parents were cheering me on. I humiliated him in front of people that he believed respected – maybe even  _ admired _ him. Salinger  _ will _ make me suffer for that and Peter is probably going to be the one to pay the price.”

After only a moment of hesitation, Trish reached out and laid her hand upon her sister’s forearm, giving her arm a tentative squeeze. “I know why you’re afraid, I know that you’re scared for him,” she murmured. “But from what you’ve told me, Peter isn’t exactly helpless, either. If he really believes that he’s in danger, I don’t think he’ll let Salinger harm him.”

\---

“What are you thinking about?” Matt asked quietly. With the knowledge of Peter’s disappearance hanging over them and their meager information on Salinger’s background to go on, all of the life seemed to have been sucked out of the office. Foggy and Karen had been almost worryingly quiet the whole day.

“I’m thinking about…superpowers. Genetics. I’ve been thinking about what Peter can and can’t do,” Foggy admitted. “Mostly so that I don’t go crazy. I admit that I did feel a little better after Jess told us he has her strength.”

“Strength, and smarts,” Matt said slowly. “But Jess and I aren’t exactly bottom of the class, either, so that might not be why. He has really good coordination, but…I don’t know, how coordinated should a seven year old be?”

“I think it is the super part,” Foggy mused. “I’ve noticed, but I guess I’m used to how quick you are on your feet and stuff. I didn’t really think of it until now.”

Matt sighed aloud. “He’s got some kind of…precognitive ability, maybe something to do with his eyesight? I’m sure that’s what was causing his migraine. And Jess said he knew that Salinger was bad news as soon they met him. He faked having an asthma attack so that Jessica would get them away.”

“Hm, well, then he’s obviously pretty used to hiding what he can do. He lies and uses tricks to disguise his powers,” Foggy observed. Lightly, he added “Sounds like someone else I know.”

He frowned, feeling uneasy. He’d never really had a problem with hiding his abilities – he’d felt guilty about lying to Foggy and Karen about what he was doing, and he’d been really conflicted about what he did as Daredevil to begin with, but he’d learned to conceal himself from Stick. Why or how had Peter learned to lie? “This…isn’t actually the first time something like this has happened.”

“Something like…faking an asthma attack?” Foggy asked, puzzled.

“No,” Matt confessed quietly. “Like Peter suddenly getting scared for no reason. Jess told me after it happened that he started freaking out during the walk back home, the night he met Maggie. But he’d just lost the last family member he had, he was living with two strangers, even if he liked us. She assumed he was just stressed out about the situation and didn’t know how to cope, but now I’m thinking maybe it didn’t happen for no reason after all.”

“Maybe…maybe he has your kind of hearing? Maybe he heard something that disturbed him,” Foggy guessed, though Matt could tell that he wasn’t convinced himself.

He sighed again, leaning back in his chair. Glumly, he said “If we ever get him back, I suppose we can find out.”

“Don’t think like that,” his best friend said sharply. Matt could not see the way the lines around his eyes tightened, but he could hear the slight waver in his voice. “Don’t say shit like that – he’s the smartest kid I’ve ever met and he has real, actual superpowers. We don’t really understand what they  _ are _ , but we do know he’s not a sitting duck. Even if  **we** don’t find  **him** , I know Peter will find his way back, Matt.”

Matt flexed his fingers, resisting the urge to punch something out of pure frustration. “Yeah…” he huffed, head bowed. He had to believe him. He had to, because thinking that he would never find his son again left this future a black hole that Matt couldn’t bear to contemplate. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Karen, who had been wandering around in a lackluster fashion, draped herself over a chair with the attitude of someone whose mind was still not presently in the room with them. Foggy nudged her. “You’ve been awfully quiet the whole morning. What are  _ you _ thinking about?”

There was a moment of silence as Karen considered her answer. “Ah…it’s kind of morbid,” she admitted. “And it’s more than kind of silly…”

“Silly, I can handle. I’m less sure about morbid,” Foggy said with a slight smile, trying to keep their spirits high. “Whatcha got?”

“I’ve been thinking about Hannibal Lector,” Karen said finally. “I’m thinking about the Silence of the Lambs.”

“Uh…” said Foggy. “I’m not saying it’s not…thematically appropriate – if anything it might be a little too on the nose – but Jess and her new tagalongs didn’t mention anything about Salinger being an actual cannibal, Kare. Wanna share with the class?”

“Well, really I’ve been thinking about _ the Silence of the Lambs _ ,” she said, fingers instinctively poised around the shape of a pencil. “Have you seen it? Or-or, heard it, Matt?”

“Yes,” said Foggy, and Matt said “No. I don’t tend to enjoy horror or thriller and suspense films, because a lot of the tone is designed to come through in the skill of the cinematography. Why have you been thinking of it?”

Karen had an instinct for danger, a nose for trouble, and Matt knew better than to doubt her. “Salinger wants the evidence that Trish took in return for Peter, right? But we obviously can’t let him get away with everything he’s done.” She licked her lips. “In  _ the Silence of the Lambs _ , Clarice asks Hannibal Lector how to catch the serial killer she’s chasing. And he asks her to examine his – the killer’s – nature. What does he do?”

“He covets,” Foggy murmured, “And how do we learn to covet?”

And they both said, “We covet what we see every day.”

He stared at Karen for a moment, speechless, before telling her, “You’re brilliant. That’s exactly how we’re going to get him, Kare.”

“Uh, I’m going to need a refresher course,” Matt said, head turning between the two of them. “What do you mean?”

“Salinger doesn’t hate people with special powers, he wants  _ to be them _ ,” Foggy informed him with a feral grin. “And he tries to prove he can be better than they are by killing them. If we want to catch him, we shouldn’t be looking at the victims in this book, we should be trying to find out where he got his start – who was victim zero?”

Matt visibly perked up, back straightening, salivating for a way to put this monster into a cage where he so clearly deserved to belong. “He’d have been sloppier, less careful,” he agreed. “Where is Gregory Salinger’s hometown?”

Karen scrambled for a moment for her notes. “Uh…where…where…uh…” She grimaced at the notebook. “Wappingers Falls, New York.”

\---

Though he’d only been away from home for less than a day, Peter was pretty much used to being a little bit hungry and a little bit cold all the time now. He sort of assumed he would have to get used to it anyway.

He’d been scared at first, but it was difficult to be scared all the time, so mostly he was now bored. He spent a lot of time wondering where his parents were and what they were doing. What he didn’t wonder was if they missed him.

His dad – Matt… Peter had never seen him look like that. He’d seen him happy in the park, eating ice cream. Mischievous on the train as Peter sat on Jess’ lap. Annoyed when the dryer broke. Mad about something that happened at work. Long-suffering with Jess or Foggy’s teasing. Sad when he talked about Grandpa Jack, how much he would’ve liked to meet Peter.

But Peter had never seen him look  _ hurt _ that way before. It made something in his stomach twist – both in bad ways and even good. The Parkers…his first parents…had loved him, but he didn’t really remember that too well. And Aunt May used to call him her ‘shining light’.

It wasn’t the same though. When you were adopted, it was the same as knowing that the people who created you loved you and wanted you. Mom and Dad…his second parents, did.

And Peter had lied to them. For weeks, he’s been lying to them, putting his mom in danger and scaring everyone with his migraine when he’d used his powers without meaning to – not that he ever really meant to. It always just seemed to  _ happen _ .

Would they forgive him, whenever he managed to return home?

_ Thou shalt not lie _ .

When they’d gone to church to visit Grandma Maggie, Matt had told him that lying was a sin, he said it was something you should work on not doing. Would they want to keep him if he told the truth? But what if they found out he was lying? What if Salinger told them that Peter wasn’t a normal child?

Peter stared at the wall, anxiously hugging his knees to his chest and resisting the urge to chew on his nails.

…should he return home, though? Going back would mean having to face telling his- telling Matt and Jess the whole truth. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but Peter now had to concede that telling them was probably not optional anymore. He didn’t think they’d-he was pretty sure now that they weren’t going to be mean to him, but that wasn’t the same as loving him the way they’d love any other child. At least Peter was confident they wouldn’t take him on television shows and make him perform stupid tricks for an audience like an especially talented poodle.

But Peter thought about that look on his dad’s face, like he’d never smile again, and he knew that he was going to go back, no matter what happened afterwards. Though he still didn’t know how he wasn’t going to get back – he didn’t even know where he was right now. He was pretty sure that he was still in New York City, because the sounds and smells were still pretty much the same.

It would’ve been easy enough for him to escape. Even if the door was locked, the door and the walls to this place were only made of metal, but…wouldn’t Salinger just be able to find him again?

Maybe…

The door in the lower level swung up and Peter, sprawled over the thin mattress on his back, quickly scrambled upright to lean against the wall, staring wide-eyed as Salinger stalked into view. His heart sank when he noted that he didn’t seem to be carrying any food with him. His presence in the room – even in this building – made Peter’s skin feel like someone was rubbing his whole body with poison ivy and stinging nettles and wool sweaters. The pain was distracting him and that distraction was dangerous.

Peter screamed shrilly in terror and pain as he grabbed him by the shoulder, his nerves dipped in fire as Salinger made contact with his bare skin, the man staring at him as though fascinated as he tried to twist away, only gripping more tightly. “She didn’t earn it, she didn’t earn it,” he whispered, watching Peter scream with sick, clinical curiosity. “ _ You _ didn’t earn it, either. She’s unnatural. And so are you.”

He had no idea what the man was talking about – he just wanted the pain to stop! Peter twisted until he could make contact with Salinger in return, though deliberately touching him was also like putting his hands on a hot stove. Blindly, he pushed away with his left hand and yanked on his arm with his right.

Salinger echoed his shriek with one of his own. Distantly, Peter heard three separate cracking sounds, and finally,  _ finally _ Salinger released him. Mindlessly, Peter scrambled past the man and out the door, racing out into the cold air of November without his jacket, scarf, or gloves or his backpack and schoolwork – not that he would even notice these things until later.

He ran full tilt without really noticing where he was going. He was still in the city, but he didn’t recognize anything he saw and his skin was still pulsing with little after-shocks of pain. His senses were tingling all over the place, but he really couldn’t tell if that was because he was surrounded by danger or if that was also caused by the after-effects of being touched by Salinger’s bare hands.

Peter stared mutely down at his own hands. Though he hadn’t exactly done it on purpose, he knew he must’ve broken at least Salinger’s nose, and he couldn’t help but feel that the man had deserved it, even though everything Peter had ever been taught told him that hitting was wrong.

Uneasily, he realized that the sun was starting to go down, and he still didn’t really recognize where he was. Distantly, he could see the figure of buildings thrusting into the city skyline, but the landmark that was always his guiding compass – Avengers Tower – was nowhere to be found.

He was starving, cold, lost, and… _ and I still can’t go back home _ , he realized, staring down at his fingers again.  _ Salinger is still after me –and he’s gonna be even madder now _ . What if he hurt Mom? Or Dad? Or Aunt Karen? Or Uncle Foggy?

He was seriously considering trying to find Uncle Luke and asking him and Aunt Claire for some heavy-duty help when a deep voice said “Peter? You’re Peter Parker?”

“Um…” Peter began, turning around. His face was on tv now, so he just had to convince whoever this was that he was definitely not Peter, definitely not lost, and no you should definitely not call his parents!

His eyes widened, and his jaw moved up and down soundlessly.

“Oh,” the Punisher sighed, eyeing him shrewdly. “You recognize me.”

“Um,” Peter said again, this time in a high-pitched squeak. He didn't see a gun on the man, but his senses were still tingling after that encounter with Salinger. He couldn’t rely on them right now.

“Let’s go,” the man said, shocking him even more.

“Go where?” Peter said weakly.

Frank Castle grinned at him, the same kind of there-and-gone expression that reminded him painfully of his mother. “Do you like dogs, Peter? Karen said you like dogs.”

“Uh…uh-huh.” He swallowed. “You know my Aunt Karen?”

“Who do you think sent me to get you, kid?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is currently my most-read story, so i just want to say: stay safe, stay inside unless you absolutely can't, and take care of yourselves and your community. do not take silly risks, my loves, and spare your store clerks, food workers, and public workers the risk of infection as much as possible, as well as sparing your medical professionals the pain of trying (and maybe failing) to save you. stay calm, and i know we'll get through this <3


	6. Chapter 6

“Here, hungry?” Peter asked the whining black pitbull in the back, body twisting in his seat with a piece of jerky held out. He showed absolutely no fear as those large jaws snapped up the tasty meat. Instead, Peter giggled “Good boy, Max.”

Max whined again, licking the boy’s fingers eagerly.

In the driver’s seat, Frank clicked down the heating a notch as they crossed the state line into North Carolina. Though the boy had said he was cold when they were still in New York, he hadn’t seemed to feel the same discomfort any other child would on a chilly November evening without even a coat on – didn’t even shiver. The kid also slept like the dead, passing out cold almost from the moment he got into the truck without waking until the sun had already risen, and he ate like a horse, cramming an entire Big Mac into his face, with fries. He’d hardly believed Karen when she told him this scrawny little kid was actually as strong as a grown man, but now he thought she might be onto something.

From the corner of his vision, Frank could see Peter’s eyes scan the sign: Welcome to Tennessee. “Uh…where are we going, Mister Castle?”

Frank resisted the urge to snort. Mister Castle. If this kid got any more like Murdock, he’d have horns for Christ’s sake. “Absolutely nowhere.”

“Huh?”

“Ain’t goin’ anywhere, kid. That’s the point,” he told Peter gruffly. “If we don’t have any set destination or travel pattern, it will be harder for anybody to track us down. Got it?”

“Um, yeah, I think so.” Peter swallowed and looked down at his lap, fidgeting with the straw in the soda they’d gotten at a McDonald’s drive-thru, with a Peter sleeping/hiding beneath Frank’s coat so that nobody would be able to get a clear look at his face. “Do-do my mom and dad know where I am?”

“I have no idea,” Frank said honestly, with a quick glance at him. “Left Karen a message that said I picked you up just like she asked, but I dunno whether she told your parents or not.”

Brightening, Peter asked “Could I call her? Or Uncle Foggy?”

“Nope,” he said flatly, and Peter’s enthusiasm dampened considerably. “We’re going dark until she leaves me a message that it’s safe to take you back.”

“How will she do that?”

“Karen’s got her ways,” he murmured cryptically.

\---

Karen tripped over the welcome mat in the darkened hallway of her empty apartment, cursing under her breath as she nearly face-planted straight into the opposite wall. Her makeup had basically melted from her face hours ago, she hadn’t had any decent sleep in nearly 72 hours, and her stomach was tied up in knots all the time. Her feet were aching, her neck was sore, and her poor little guy was still being held hostage by a fucking  _ lunatic _ .

After locking the door and wrestling her heels off, she stomped down the hallway and flopped directly onto her bed without bothering to take the rest of her clothes off or even brush her teeth.

She slept.

Four hours later, Karen rolled over and nearly rolled off the bed entirely, yelping as she caught herself before her elbow slammed into the ground. She vaguely recalled her dreams – uneasy nightmares filled with being chased by something she couldn’t see or get away from, but no clear images stuck with her now that she was fully awake.

Grumbling incoherently, she pushed herself out of bed to finally brush her teeth and make herself some very strong coffee. Stronger than Jessica, blacker than Luke, and more Irish than the entire Nelson clan kind of coffee.

With her mouth no longer feeling as though something foul had died there, she stumbled to the kitchen and froze as her eyes processed what she was seeing.

The kitchen as a whole looked…suspiciously neater. Not in an obvious way, it wasn’t like her kitchen was generally a mess. But the counters looked like they’d been wiped down and everything was just a little straighter and more put together than Karen usually left it.

“Okay,” she murmured aloud, slowly turning in a circle around the middle of the room. “Okay, I’m listening…so where did you put it?”

Karen had to scan the room, not quite daring to touch anything until she’d located whatever message Frank had left for her. At first glance, she scowled, unable to see what he was pointing her toward – and then she realized that the towel she normally left hanging over the handle of the stove was now draped over the edge of the drawer she kept the utensils in.

Instinctively, she held her breath as she opened the drawer, cautiously pawing through the contents. A weak, choked-off laugh escaped her as Karen held up a little silver keychain with a baby blue rattle dangling from the end. ‘It’s a Boy!’ it said in a cheerful yellow bubble script. Tears ran down her face as she slid down the fridge, rattle clutched in her fist. For the first time since she’d seen Salinger standing next to Peter, she felt able to take a deep breath.

Peter was safe.

\---

“He said this afternoon,” Trish said slowly, clutching her phone as she stared at the message illuminated over the screen. “In public, probably so you can’t beat the shit out of him again.”

Jess snorted. “Didn’t help him the first time, but alright. I’ll bite. Where and when?”

Trish’s eyelids flickered. “In an hour, in front of…he says it’s only a few blocks away from here.” Her nose wrinkled. “Ugh, that means he’s still watching you. Anyway, he wants to meet you in front of Clinton Church in an hour.”

She was startled when Matt, Peter’s nice level-headed father, suddenly hissed and bared his teeth angrily. “Son of a bitch.”

Foggy hummed thoughtfully. “That’s playing such dirty pool, man.  _ Wow _ .”

“Why?” Erik asked, leaning back, coffee in hand. He was lucky Karen wasn’t here to make it yet. “What’s at Clinton Church?”

He didn’t want to say anything about it directly, because it wasn’t relevant or helpful, but Matt’s presence was no longer the soothing relaxer that it used to be. Harmless blind lawyer must be having a lot of not-so-harmless thoughts and for Erik, it felt like having his skull bashed in with a crowbar. Jessica wasn’t even having this effect on him right now and she’d been the one to actually thrash the guy yesterday.

Matt’s hands clenched, white-knuckled on his cane, jaw flexing rather impressively before he said, “Clinton Church is where I attend Mass, whenever I find the time, and Peter’s grandmother – my  _ mother _ – works just next door.”

“Do you think he knows?” Jess whispered, so softly it was hardly more than moving her lips. It wouldn’t matter – standing in the same room, Matt would know what she said no matter how quietly her voice was pitched. “Has he figured it out?”

Without speaking, Matt gave a tiny jerk of the head – no, he didn’t think that Salinger had figured out that Peter’s father also had superhuman abilities. Matt felt confidently certain that if Salinger did know, he wouldn’t be able to resist being more overtly threatening. It just wasn’t in his psychology. As far as any of them could tell, Salinger had the personal charm of a large slimy lizard, only less cute.

\---

“Mr. Castle?”

“Hm?” Cornfields sped past them, barren and lined with November frost.

“Do you know Daredevil?” Peter was trying his best not to squirm around or babble, the way he knew he often did, but it was very hard. About every two hours or so, they stopped and got out so that Max could potty among the frozen ditches, and Mr. Castle let Peter throw him a tennis ball for a while. But even in school, he didn’t generally spend this much time sitting still.

“We’ve met,” Frank grunted, and at first, Peter thought that was all he was getting, until Frank also said, “He and I didn’t really see eye to eye, but Red’s a good kid.”

A bit wistfully, Peter said, “Do you think something’s happened to him? I was hoping I could see him, now that I live in his neighborhood. But he’s been missing for weeks.” He watched the empty field, rows of hulled down dead corn stalks standing stiff even in the cold winter wind, and felt an eerie chill that had nothing to do with the cold. Desperately, he wished for his mother. Maybe Mary Parker, with her wispy hair and soft hands, maybe Jess with her gossamer smiles and leather boots – he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even certain that it mattered, right now. “…I hope he’s okay.”

Frank glanced at him, a hint of sympathy reaching his stern face. He could see the homesickness on his eyes – brown, just like Red’s.  _ This is a real motherfucker of a situation you’ve gotten yourself into, Murdock. Christ. And people think  _ _ I’ve _ _ got mental problems _ .

He did, but that wasn’t the point. Frank pulled a newspaper from the top of the dashboard, plopping it straight into Peter’s lap. “Looks pretty alive to me.”

Peter gaped at the headline in front of him, complete with a grainy CCTV image of a man in a horned helmet standing inside some random alley. ‘HELL HATH NO FURY’ the paper shrieked. It was a national paper, but this wasn’t on the front page.

“ _ The Devil has returned to New York City _ ,” Peter read aloud, brow furrowed. “ _ Beginning late Friday night, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, the so-called ‘Daredevil’ has returned after weeks of absence and it appears that the ap-aptly named Devil has brought a new fury to the district. An officer in the precinct was quoted as saying that he’s never seen the unknown vigilante so worked up before. ‘He always gave the more unsavory characters reason to reconsider their lifestyle’, Officer Nichols said archly, ‘But this time we were picking up guys who were literally gibbering with terror. I don’t know what it is, but the Devil’s mad, and I think if he doesn’t get what he wants from these little outings, we’re all gonna pay for it’ _ .”

Peter put the paper down, looking troubled as he bit his lip. “…he doesn’t sound very okay, Mister Castle.”

Frank looked over at the boy and sighed inaudibly at his large sad eyes. Jesus, Karen was right. This kid was adult kryptonite. He’d bet that Red was losing his damn mind right now – assuming that Karen hadn’t yet told him about Peter’s current whereabouts.  _ He _ would be, if it were him.  _ Worse _ , even.

“I imagine he ain’t too pleased to hear somebody’s been snatching kids straight outta his neighborhood,” Frank said finally. It had the benefit of at least being quite true. Personal connections aside, he was all too sure that Red would  _ not _ appreciate being told that some jack off was stealing children because they were ‘special’ (much nicer than the word Salinger would probably use, but that was still Karen’s word, not Frank’s).

Peter went back to staring at the paper in thoughtful silence, which was unusual for him in and of itself. Not the thoughtfulness, the silence. And THAT was a whole other thing – if he ever got back into contact with Red after this whole scenario, Frank was gonna have to tell him to find a way to get this kid to lighten the fuck up. Children should not be this serious and contemplative. “Maybe Uncle Luke told him,” Peter reasoned aloud, glancing over at him. “Jess said he knows Daredevil.”

_ Luke _ knows Daredevil. Not for the first time, Frank resisted the urge to snort, mouthing “ _ Jess said _ – what the fuck” to himself when Peter was facing away.

“Yeah, we’re all in the same fu-frigging club,” he sighed, rolling his eyes. “We all got screwed over by someone who decided to ruin our lives. Probably how your mom got to be a member, too.”

“What do you mean?” Peter asked in a small voice. “Jess…What do you mean, Jess is in your club?”

Oh fuck. They literally did not tell this child anything, did they?

“I mean,” Frank hedged, trying to squirm his way out of giving up the secret his parents had clearly tried to avoid telling him, “That sometimes bad people do things, hurt people. And sometimes, the people they hurt find ways to hurt them back. That’s all.”

“Oh.” His brows scrunched together. “You mean…like the man who was with her…when I was a baby? Like that? Jess said there was a bad man with her, and she was afraid that he would hurt me.”

Frank scratched at his neck. “I suppose so, yeah. He was a nasty piece of work, too. A power like that…” He whistled. “Girl’s lucky she made it out alive.”

Peter froze in the chair. “A power?”

Why? Why did he get the responsibility of teaching this child the hard facts of reality and where the hell were his useless parents when he needed them? Frank drummed on the steering wheel.

Fuck it, this wasn’t a secret he was bothering to keep. “Yeah, kid. That man was kinda…you know what a hostage is?” He waited for Peter to nod slowly before continuing. “He was sorta holdin’ your mom hostage. He had special powers, and he could make anyone who heard his voice do what he wanted – even if what he was asking for could hurt them or make them real sad. He was a monster. A real life, honest-to-god monster.”

He stopped himself from going any further, seeing the chalky color of Peter’s face – though Frank’s impression about  _ why _ Peter looked so stricken was mistaken. “She stopped him though – otherwise, he’d be on my list.”

_ She’s gonna hate me, she’s gonna hate me _ , he thought, frantically resisting the urge to chew at his fingernails.  _ I can’t tell her I have powers, she’s gonna think I’m a monster – just like the bad man! _

“Did she – did she kill him?” Peter squeaked, clutching his seat nervously.

Again, Frank was mistaken about the motives behind the question. Thinking that Peter was afraid of Kilgrave, he quietly said, “Yeah, kid. Your mom took care of him.” Frank sighed, giving an angry shake of the head. “Not before a lot of bad things happened before that, or so I’ve heard. Made this poor girl shoot her own parents. Poor kid. She killed herself just to get away from him.”

A glance over at Peter made Frank close his mouth with a click of teeth. Shit. That was too much, going too far – maybe the rug-rat’s chatterbox trait was clearly rubbing off on him. The kid looked like he’d seen a ghost.

Peter sat stiffly in his seat, wishing the world would swallow him whole. That man was  _ evil _ , and his mother had killed him to stop him from hurting any more people…what would she do when she realized that Peter was just like him?!

\---

Because Jessica wanted Matt and Trish kept away from Salinger (though for different reasons) and Eric obviously had to be kept away from him, Jess decided to bring Luke with her. Both because he would be a good third party witness and also, if she lost her temper, Luke was one of the few people who could not only talk her down but physically  _ stop _ her, if it came to that. And he was level-headed enough not to just let her beat Salinger to a pulp, the way Danny or Colleen might. Hell, Colleen would probably help.

So, it was Luke.

As not-good as Jess knew this meeting was going to end up going, her sixth-sense rang a loud alarm bell at the sight of Salinger, face bandaged with both eyes blackened and his right arm in both a cast and sling.

“Did you get hit by a fucking truck?” she asked bluntly.

Salinger glowered at her – and at Luke, glaring at the other man with his eyes nearly swollen shut. “You can thank your little hell-spawn for this,” he croaked. “The monster nearly  _ killed _ me.”

Jess froze, trembling slightly in place. “ _ What did you do _ ?” she whispered, hands clenching and unclenching. Luke caught her as she tried to lunge forward, fingers clawed as they reached for Salinger’s face, and she repeated it, this time as a howling scream: “ _ WHAT DID YOU DO?! _ ”

“What did _I_ do?!” Salinger shrieked, spittle flying from his lips. “I could have him locked away for this, Jones! Your sweet little angel broke my nose and three of the bones in my hand – after dislocating my shoulder!”

“He’s  _ never _ -he’s  _ NEVER _ hurt  _ anyone _ before,” Jessica snarled, teeth bared savagely, watching with pleasure at his flinch as once again, Luke had to hold her back. “He’s strong enough to knock down a grown man, and he’s NEVER done anything to hurt someone – what did you do to him?!”

“My property, Miss Jones,” he said crisply, lips pursed.

“Where is my son?” she demanded.

Salinger held out his hand impatiently, without saying a word, though his meaning was clear: no photos, no Peter.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “And how do I know you’ll give me the real location? I want an escort to your hideaway,  _ Gregory _ .”

He raised his brows. “That’s a surprise, because I think you might want to hurry.”

Her jaw dropped open. “What?”

Salinger gritted his teeth. “My property, Miss Jones. And not a moment sooner.”

She shoved the album into his chest, ready to tear the location from his big dumb mouth if necessary. “ _ Where _ ?!”

Calm, patient now that he had acquired all her leverage, Salinger blinked his pale lizard eyes at her, stuffing the album into his messenger bag. “I have no idea.”

“Repeat that," Jess growled, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and listening to his gasp of pain as his arm was jostled. She shook him. " _ Repeat that _ ."

"He ran away," Salinger wheezed, bug-eyed in terror.

Even Luke's eyes went wide. "Oh," he breathed, "You're a dead man."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, staring at the mountain of half-finished chapters for every single one of my WIPs: when my depression, anxiety, and ADHD stop kicking my ass, you're all gonna be in so much trouble


End file.
